Explore Poems: Metaphor

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Take the I Out
By Sharon Olds
But I love the I, steel I-beam
that my father sold. They poured the pig iron
into the mold, and it fed out slowly,
a bending jelly in the bath, and it hardened,
Bessemer, blister, crucible, alloy, and he
marketed it, and bought bourbon, and...
The City in Which I Love You
By Li-Young Lee
And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
and I mount the…
Deep Water Trawling
By Jorie Graham
The blades like irises turning very fast to see you completely—steel-blue then red where the cut occurs…
The Covenant
By Brenda Hillman
Having stopped using dolphins to locate explosives in the Cold War
they had 30 leftover dolphins.
An officer…
- Nature
- Animals
- Living
- Marriage & Companionship
- Midlife
- Time & Brevity
- Techniques
- Imagery
- Metaphor
- + 2 more
I Don‘t Like Poetry
By Joshua Seigal
I don’t like similes.Every time I try to think of onemy brain feels like a vast, empty desert;my eyes…
Cyrus & the Snakes
By Ada Limón
My brother holds a snake by its head. The whole
            length of the snake is the length

of my brother’s body. The snake’s head
            is held safely, securely, as if my brother

is showing him something in the distant high grass.
            I...
The Magnificent Frigatebird
By Ada Limón
Is it okay to begin with the obvious? I am full of stones—
is it okay not to look out this window, but to look out another?

A mentor once said, You can't start a poem...
Calling Things What They Are
By Ada Limón
I pass the feeder and yell, Grackle party! And then an hour later I yell, Mourning dove afterparty! (I call the feeder the party and the seed on the ground the afterparty.) I am getting so good at watching that...
Gratitude
By Cornelius Eady
I’m here
to tell you
an old story.
This
Appears to be
my work.
I live
in the world,
Walk
the streets…
I’m a Fool to Love You
By Cornelius Eady
Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell…
Mrs. Butterworth, Uncle Ben & Aunt Jemima
By Frank X. Walker
...walk into a bar in America.
Butterworth says, I’m being repackaged.
Ben says, I’m being rebranded.
Jemima says, I remember
when they branded my mama on her back.

The bartender says, I could stand in the middle
of Main Street and kill somebody
and I wouldn’t...
The Bug Wrangler
By Mike Doughty
He was jailed for cruelty to insects, and his agent wasn’t answering the phone, so he stayed awake in the cell all night, pictures jumping around his head of the cops and the blowdryer they took as evidence. He used...
Self-Portrait as David Lynch
By David Roderick
I wear a flower in my lapel.
I like the sweetness of its lie in my nose.
A carnation, the fool’s flower,

its heart a wilting empire.
In late-night editing sessions,
I imagine I’m planting flowers

in the sockets of eyes. Whatever helps
me reach our rigor...
Crip vs. Crip
By Walela Nehanda
Crip (noun): slang for a disabled person/the whole of
the disabled community/
a school of thought
Example: “I’m on crip time”
Meaning: Time bends differently when the universe that is
my body dictates it

Crip (noun): a Black gang that originated in...
XLIX. ("its a secrete")
By Jos Charles
its a secrete

the grls speeching mye hole /

inn 2 the lindens / wee go out

& playe footballe / verie nashenallie

how wee leeve a stall / piteus

wen the grls

speech me /

this is how u make a porno / ...
Into the Weeds
By Kevin Prufer
The brutality of those two men
who broke into her apartment
and murdered her boyfriend,
...
I Have Wasted My Life
By Justin Phillip Reed
There it goes, thin thing,
cheshiring between trees
whose reaper-robes trail
...
- Social Commentaries
- Race & Ethnicity
- Living
- Death
- The Mind
- Meters
- Free Verse
- Techniques
- Imagery
- Metaphor
- Simile
- Grief
- + 5 more
Can You Describe Your Years in Prison?
By Aria Aber
Over Skype, I try to document my mother’s
bald-shaved youth—she has a surplus in truths,
and science has proven what it had to prove:
every helicopter-screech I dreamed of was my mother’s first.
Rippling my dumb hand, I wake up in childhood’s crypt,
where prayer...
To a Wreath of Snow
By Emily Brontë
O transient voyager of heaven!
⁠ ⁠ ⁠ O silent sign of winter skies!
What adverse wind thy sail has driven
⁠ ⁠ ⁠ To dungeons where a prisoner lies?

Methinks the hands that shut the sun
⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠So sternly from this morning's brow
Might still their rebel task have done
⁠⁠ ⁠ ⁠ And checked a thing...
A Bell Is a Bearer of Time
By Alison C. Rollins
I am
a product
of my time.
Time is a body
that resembles
a sound without a scale.
Forever foreclosed fortitude.
In heaven, the dinner bell rings
as elegy. The porch-light stars turn
on their mothering moths. Betrayal
takes at least two, and wherever two
or more are gathered, I am...

p1A Bell Is a Bearer of Time

A Bell Is a Bearer of Time